


truth or lie

by vsonics



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Everyone Is Alive, Fairies, M/M, Minor Vernon Boyd/Erica Reyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-12
Updated: 2014-01-12
Packaged: 2018-01-08 10:04:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1131332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vsonics/pseuds/vsonics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I’m just telling you, there aren’t fairy-tale rules about lying to a werewolf. You don’t get away with telling a lie because what you said was technically true. Werewolves would be listening for a physiological response, like a lie detector. It doesn’t matter whether it’s actually the truth on a technicality, it matters what the <em>intent </em>was. Whether you can keep your tells in check.”</p>
<p>Stiles scowled. “Thank you for that lecture, but I think <em>you’re</em> missing the point. Of the game<em>, </em>Derek,” he said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	truth or lie

**Author's Note:**

> so I wrote this during the hiatus but took forever to finish it. and also erica and boyd are alive for pretty much no reason except I wanted them to be.
> 
> things get pretty sappy in the end and i'm sorry.
> 
> if you find any mistakes in it please feel free to let me know!

“We’re not fairies, you know that right?” Derek said. His tone said annoyed, but when Stiles glanced over at him his face looked more amused.

“Excuse me?” Stiles, on the other hand, carried his irritation across both his voice and his expression. 

He and Erica were playing a game in the living room – Truth or Lie. Stiles said something, she guessed which. _Guessed_ was a bit of a misnomer, considering the whole _werewolf_ thing, but it was fun anyway. Isaac, Cora, and Boyd were pretending that it was stupid. A lot of eye rolling, pretending not to play. They were just as invested, though, and Stiles knew because every time Erica hesitated on her answer Boyd cut in, smooth as anything. He wasn’t wrong once and his slow, smug grin said he knew it.

Isaac preferred to keep to the occasional biting commentary, mocking Stiles’ truths and scoffing at his lies. Stiles rose above it – Isaac was just a pompous asshole by nature, he couldn’t help it. Cora, currently kicking the asses of Boyd and Isaac both at Mario Kart, only occasionally looked up to raise a mocking eyebrow at him. She and her brother were eerily similar sometimes. 

Boyd, as far as Stiles could tell, hadn’t changed much at all in the long run, after the whole alpha debacle. Erica, on the other hand, had. Less ridiculous werewolf posturing, mostly. She went quiet and let herself look sad now, sometimes, but she also let herself look a lot happier too. Her heels didn’t get any shorter, though, and now Stiles could tell that she thought he was _funny_ , which was always a plus in his book.

“We’re werewolves. Not fairies,” Derek repeated, as if he was pointing out something obvious.

“No, I heard you,” Stiles said. “I just don’t know what I’m supposed to _take_ from that statement. What, are fairies even real?”

Derek looked up at the ceiling as if asking for patience.

“Not the point. I’m just telling you, there aren’t fairy-tale rules about lying to a werewolf. You don’t get away with telling a lie because what you said was technically true. Werewolves would be listening for a physiological response, like a lie detector. It doesn’t matter whether it’s actually the truth on a technicality, it matters what the _intent_ was. Whether you can keep your tells in check.”

Stiles scowled. “Thank you for that lecture, but I think _you’re_ missing the point. Of the game _,_ Derek,” he said.  But even though that was the truth, too, he would have known that his heartbeat gave him away for a lie even if Erica hadn’t snorted behind him.

Because he knew exactly what Derek meant.

He had been doing it – getting fancy with his semantics to pull one over on Erica (“ _I ate soup for dinner last night.” “Truth.” “Lie – I_ drank _the soup out of a mug. Point for me.”)_ Which was, ostensibly, well within the rules of the game, however much Isaac might bitch about it.

Except that they all knew that the real point of the game was for Erica to work on listening for tells and for Stiles to practice lying better.

Not that he wasn’t already a good liar, smooth enough even to (usually) trick a man that was both the sheriff _and_ his father. But there was, as Derek so kindly pointed out, a difference between giving off every impression of telling the truth and actually _believing_ it. Doing it so well that he could trick walking lie detector tests.

In any case, Derek backed off and Erica and Stiles (and Isaac and Boyd and even Cora who definitely also thought Stiles was funny and should stop pretending) went back to the game like the interruption hadn’t even happened.

At home that night, though, in bed, Stiles’ brain went back to it. First to the annoyance that stupid Derek was right. And then at his word choice.

Because, one, he’s done the exact same thing to the question about the potential reality of fairies – just avoided answering. And, two, Derek had referred to _fairy tale_ rules.

There was something kind of sad about thinking about a littler Derek being read fairy tales by his parents before bed. It was easier to think of Derek in terms of “werewolf” than it was to consider that, not even that long ago, Derek had just been a (relatively) normal kid in a (relatively) normal family. He was somebody’s baby brother once.

The idea made Stiles sad and uncomfortable.

In his head, Derek was always a mumbling, growly, gruff kind of guy. Probably something to do with how his most memorable lines always seemed to be death threats (and the fact that Derek did, in fact, literally _growl_ sometimes certainly didn’t help).

So Stiles often found himself surprised, when faced with real-life Derek, at just how _mild_ he was. His voice, his face. There was a kind of earnestness to him – when he wasn’t trying to threaten or charm people into doing what he wanted - that sometimes caught Stiles off guard. 

Stiles frowned, shook the thoughts away, rolled over onto his side. The moon was a waxing gibbous. More importantly, it was a Wednesday and he had a calculus test the next day. Sleep was higher priority than pondering the mysterious inner workings of Derek Hale.

 

...

 

“I can’t _believe_ you didn’t just fucking _say_ that fairies were real!” Stiles was speaking through gritted teeth. Half out of sheer rage, half because a fucking fairy punched him in the fucking face and that fucking _hurt_.

A goddamn fairy. 

There was a long moment of silence. “I didn’t actually think that they were,” Derek finally admitted. 

Stiles wanted to punch _him_ in the face.

Things were quiet for another few minutes. It was hardly a comfortable silence.

Derek finally broke it, glancing away from the road to look at Stiles. “Are you still bleeding?”

Stiles pulled the wad of fast food napkins away from his face, poked gently at a nostril. It was caked with blood but his finger came away dry.

“Yes,” he said mulishly.

“Lie,” Derek said.

Stiles was almost – _almost_ \- startled into a laugh by that. Instead he turned his grin into a grimace and looked out the window.

“What’s with the napkins anyway? ‘My-body-is-my-temple’ Hale sneaking off to Mickey D’s?”

“Isaac likes Happy Meals.”

Stiles whipped his head back from the window fast enough to jar his nose. Derek’s serious expression lasted about thirty seconds before the corner of his mouth quirked up.

“Liar!” Stiles crowed. “I knew that was a lie.”

“No. You didn’t. You really _should_ work on that.” 

Stiles shrugged, dabbing at his nose a few more times before tossing the bloody napkins to the floorboard. He attempted but failed not to smirk at Derek’s obvious wince.  Stile probably wouldn’t have littered in the Camaro, but it was impossible to muster up any respect at all for Derek’s new wheels.

“Nah, I think you guys all _like_ being able to lie-detector the poor human. Just adds to your werewolf-superiority complex. Besides, now that we know they’re real, we’re gonna need my superior lie-evasion techniques to get rid of these fairies.”

“I’m not sure it works like that for real fairies either, Stiles.” 

Derek was right. The lie thing was complete garbage. Real fairies had as many magic rules as they did morals.  (Basically none.)

Fucking fairies.

 

...

 

New-Beta-Derek was a lot calmer than Alpha Derek was, more relaxed. And definitely had a sunnier disposition than Old-Beta-Derek. It took Stiles a bit to catch up, but his freer display of a sense of humor, the new penchant for his smiles to look genuine, the way he and the pack seemed to be “hanging out” a lot more than “training” lately.

The fact that they were hanging out in an actual, livable residence. Those were all pretty big warning signs.

Not that these weren’t all good things, of course. But Stiles always liked to have something to complain about, so he brought it up with Scott at lunch.

“I don’t think I told you, but he actually, like, _smiled_ at me the other day, even.”

Scott shrugged helplessly, at least waited until he swallowed his bite of hamburger to respond.

“I dunno, man. Stop obsessing, I think it’s nice. He actually told me that my idea about iron for the fairies was a really good one.”

Okay, so fairies had to follow the one rule. Little fuckers couldn’t stand iron. Stiles wasn’t even bitter about the fact that it was _Scott’s_ rule and not the lying thing. Wasn’t _very_ bitter.

“No, but that’s exactly what I meant. It’s weird.”

“I think he’s just happier. You know, he found Cora. Erica and Boyd came back and dickbag Peter _didn’t_. I think he’s really happy about not being an alpha anymore. I don’t think he liked it as much as he pretended.”

Stiles picked at his napkin, flicked a few of the shreds of it over at Scott.

“You know, Insightful-Alpha-Scott is kind of annoying sometimes,” he finally said. “Stop being so insightful and _reasonable_ all the time.” 

Scott grinned and threw his napkin at Stiles’ head.

 

...

 

The iron worked to keep fairies away, but it didn’t entirely get _rid_ of them. If anything, it just sent them off to lick their wounds and get pissed.

Stiles had nailed an iron horseshoe to the door jamb at home, convinced his dad to put one on his desk at work.

(That had been a fun conversation. His dad had believed him, of course, was open to believing things probably more than even Stiles at this point – but just because he believed that fairies were _real_ didn’t stop him from teasing Stiles mercilessly about the fact that it was _fairies_ that Stiles and his big, strong werewolf friends were dealing with. Stiles probably would have been laughing right along there with him if it weren’t for the fact that his nose was still a little tender.)

But the fairies were still lurking around the woods, sending cryptic messages about how they had just as much right to the “sacred grove” as the werewolves did. 

Which, actually, Stiles wasn’t buying. He hadn’t seen any of them lining up to die for the Nemeton, thank you very much. They had that role on lock. 

But they were still poking around anyway, wanting to make some kind of deal. Which Scott would probably have been open to if they hadn’t started off so violently, and Derek was, naturally, completely against. Even if he did keep his mouth shut about things now at werewolf meetings, his grimaces and brow furrowing made his opinion pretty clear. Fairies were bad news. 

Stiles was rather inclined to agree. 

Things had gone quiet was the weird thing. Even after Scott had his brain blast about keeping iron around and they backed off, they hadn’t exactly been a silent presence. Last week, for example, all of the milk had gone bad. 

Curdled. All of it. All of the milk in Beacon Hills. The newscasters were still scratching their heads over the strange anomaly. Stiles was still traumatized about the giant gulp of rancid milk he’d taken right out of the jug. He was perfectly willing to kill all of the fairies just for that.

But since then there’d been nothing. Not a single fairy prank at all. It was the exact opposite of reassuring.

Which was how Stiles had ended up on Fairy Watch with _Derek_ of all people.

“They aren’t doing anything,” Stiles said. He had found an old pair of binoculars, was peering through them into the woods. 

“I know,” Derek said. He was sitting in the passenger seat of the jeep, head tilted back and eyes closed.

Stiles watched for another minute. This was boring.

“Do they know we’re here?”

“Probably.”

Stiles threw his hands up in the air, tossed the binoculars to the back seat. “This is ridiculous. They aren’t going to do anything. They never do anything. Why are we even here.” 

There was an SAT prep going on after school. They were there because everyone else was at that. Stiles hadn’t needed to take it. He’d already aced the thing, thank you very much, flying colors. Lydia had, too, surprising no one, but there was no way that she was going to sit on surveillance duty. She’d laughed in Scott’s face when he suggested it, then patted him on the cheek and flounced away.

Everyone else, though, had partnered up and taken a shift. Admittedly, a few of the partners probably weren’t the most effective. Stiles knew for a fact that Erica and Boyd had just made out the whole time and hardly paid attention to the fairies at all. 

He didn’t really _care_ to know that, but Erica had told him. When he’d pointed out that they were supposed to be on watch she’d just told him that if anything had happened they would’ve heard it because werewolf. 

Clearly Derek was also evoking the werewolf-power thing.

“Are you even awake?” Stiles asked irritably.

“Yes.”

He huffed, pressed his nose against the window glass again. “I’m bored.”

“Only boring people get bored.”

Stiles rolled his eyes. He would’ve done it harder for Derek’s benefit, if only the guy would _open his eyes_. “Yeah whatever, asshole.”

He shifted listlessly in his seat for a few more minutes, then brightened up.

“Hey, you wanna play a game?”

“No.”

“Yeah, let’s play a game. Truth or lie. I’m getting really good.”

“Lie.”

It actually took Stiles a moment for that to sink in, but he immediately mustered up the appropriate level of anger when it did. “No, that was _not_ a lie. I am getting better. Erica said so.”

Derek finally opened an eye and looked over at him. “You’re right,” he agreed after a moment - which might have been enough to Stiles to drop over dead because how often had Derek ever said _that_ in his life - but then he kept talking. “You actually thought you were telling the truth there. Still wrong though.”

The bastard then had the audacity to chuckle a little under his breath at his _own joke_ and then close his eyes again, settle more comfortably into the reclined seat.

“I hate you,” Stiles said, turning to face the window again. He couldn’t see any more fairies, but they were probably out there. Better than looking at Derek anyway. His face got even softer, more relaxed, when he slept. Also he had killer eyelashes, and Stiles didn’t need to waste his surveillance time mapping out the perfection that was Derek Hale’s face. He did enough of that in his free time.

“Also a lie,” Derek said. His eyes remained closed this time, but a hitch of a grin appeared in his mouth. “You _love_ me,” he added, his voice _teasing_.

Any retort that Stiles may have had at that point died on his lips, sputtered off into...well, an unintelligible sputter. He pressed his face more firmly against the window, both to cool his warm face (it had just gotten warm in the car was all) and also to get more smudges on the glass. It bothered Derek, so. There.

“I do not,” he finally muttered darkly.

“I didn’t mean-” Derek said at the same time, sounding uncomfortable. Stiles looked over his shoulder to find Derek sitting up, the expression on his face looking practically pained. He cleared his throat. “Obviously I know that, I didn’t,” he continued, and Stiles would have been very interested in seeing where that went – especially since he hadn’t seen Derek look so completely out of his element since Lydia took it upon herself to take him shopping for better furniture for the loft, which had been about as fantastic as it sounded – but Derek suddenly cut off again, this time turning sharply to look out his window.

His right arm reached to Stiles at the same time, firmly pushing Stiles back into the seat. His fingers were splayed across Stiles’ chest. His other hand went up to his mouth in the universal “shushing” sign that wouldn’t have been appreciated even _if_ Stiles had actually been saying anything, thank you very much.

Instead of voicing his many complaints about the treatment, however, Stiles instead just barely breathed “fairies?” and fell entirely silent at Derek’s minute nod.

He couldn’t see anything, despite his squinting, but obviously Derek was hearing something, so he sat just as still, waiting. And then Derek bolted up, pushing the door open and running out with no explanation and only the barked order to “stay in the car, Stiles!”

Which, no.

Stiles was out almost as quickly as Derek, only pausing to reach into the backseat to grab the crowbar (iron!) that he’d brought along especially for the very purpose.

 

...

 

Scott had initially been annoyed about getting called out of his SAT study session early (he’d been muttering something about being _ephemeral_ and Stiles didn’t even begin to try and understand that ) but in the end things worked out for the best.

He came in with his reasonable, ‘I’m the alpha’ negotiation, said that things had gotten out of hand – he looked at Stiles when he said it, as if smacking fairies that _attacked him first_ with a crowbar was what was out of hand – but that  if everyone was willing to be reasonable they would sit down and talk about it.

Derek’s face went into a rigid scowl but he nodded along in all of the right places and kept his mouth shut as Scott explained that they were _not_ going to stand for invasion of _their_ territory (which Stiles wasn’t even sure was actually a werewolf thing but sure sounded real good coming out of his buddy’s mouth) and the fairies claimed that the pack had no right to the Nemeton, which Stiles was happy to argue against with his crowbar if need be, but Scott did well of enough job essentially saying “too bad.”

In the end they figured out that for all their pomp and circumstance what the fairies really wanted was to perform some kind of seasonal ritual with the Nemeton. And Scott basically said okay but that after that they needed to get the hell out.

And then they talked some more and Stiles just started ignoring it all and thinking about how he was going to explain to his dad that a fairy split his lip. How embarrassing.

 Still, though, crisis averted. Fairies were figured out and there was essentially no harm done. Except the whole nose and lip and scarring-for-life by the milk thing. But no one had died and the fairies were on their way out so all in all things were okay.

If it was a fairy tale, they all lived happily ever after.

 

...

 

_Except_ how Stiles wasn’t good at dropping things and before the fairies came in and Derek pulled a soccer mom arm-seatbelt on him he was pretty sure that they were having a _moment_.

So the next day he stopped by the loft and, wonders of all wonders, found Derek there alone.

“So,” he began as soon as Derek opened the door, sweeping into the place without invitation and leaving Derek at the door. He plopped down on the couch, the nice big comfy one that Lydia had picked out.

Derek frowned and closed the door particularly slowly. “What do you want, Stiles.” It wasn’t so much a question as resigned statement.

“You think I love you?” Stiles hadn’t been entirely sure what he had been going to say, despite spending a decent amount of time attempting to plan the conversation. Those words maybe wouldn’t have been the one that he’d have picked with more thought, but they certainly packed a punch. 

Derek froze, first all of him and then, when he turned around to face Stiles, just his face, stuck all stern, closed off, and long-suffering. The usual look for him. Except that he also looked like he might be blushing a little bit. Stiles grinned at him nice and slow.

“You know that I didn’t mean it like that,” Derek finally said, not quite making eye contact. “I don’t know why...I’m sorry if it bothered you, but you don’t have to make that big of a deal out of it.” 

Stiles laughed. “You’re right. It isn’t that big of deal. You’re the one that got all weird about it.” He shrugged, pulled himself out of the cushion and stood up. “I think maybe you like me. _Like_ like me, even. Is that it, Derek? You gotta crush on me?” He waggled his eyebrows and tried not to let it hurt his feelings when Derek’s expression further soured and he reached up to rub at his temples. 

“You’re impossibly annoying, Stiles,” he sighed. “You’re always sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, you never do anything I say, and you can’t lie to save your life no matter _what_ you think. And you waltz into _my_ home and accuse me of ‘like liking’ you? What does that even mean, Stiles?”

And if that wasn’t a blow to the self-esteem Stiles wasn’t sure what was. He dropped his grin. “Hey listen, _asshole,_ you know you could just say no. I thought we were, like, feeling things, so I came to talk about that with you. That doesn’t give you the right to be such a dick.”

Derek hadn’t moved, but his face had softened and he was now looking at Stiles with an expression he might even describe as cautious. “You thought we were feeling things,” he said, slowly.

Stiles groaned in pure frustration – better to deal with anger now and go over his hurt feelings later, in private. “Yes, all right? And obviously I was wrong and I’m sorry. I’ll leave you alone, right now.”

Before he got the chance to leave, however, Derek reached out and grabbed the front of his shirt, reeling him in to press his mouth against Stiles’. Hard enough that his barely-healed lip opened up again, bleeding right onto Derek Hale.

Derek jerked back so fast that he was two feet away before Stiles could even react to the kiss in the first place. When he did, though, the space was enough that he could fit in his ecstatic fist pump.

“You do like me!” he said, pointing an accusatory finger right into Derek’s face. Then he reached out and grabbed _Derek’s_ shirt, tugging him back. Derek let him, stepping in closer.

“Your lip,” Derek said, tentatively reaching up and brushing the smear of blood on Stiles’ lower lip with his finger.

“No apologies,” Stiles demanded. “You like me. I don’t know why you couldn’t have just said so in the first place.” He was feeling particularly triumphant.

Derek’s cheeks went pink again, and he mumbled so low that Stiles could hardly hear him, even as close as they were. “I thought maybe you came here to...I don’t know, but then you said _we_ were feeling things.”

Stiles had to try hard not to laugh then, to look at Derek seriously despite his amusement. “You thought I came here to make fun of you?” he asked, shaking his head. “Jesus, Derek, I...well, okay, maybe I did. But I like you, too. _Like_ like you. I thought maybe you already knew that. I like you, all right?”

Derek looked at him closely for another few seconds, then leaned in to (carefully, and very, very sweetly) kiss Stiles again.

“Truth.”


End file.
